Microsoft Hohm Shutdown Blamed on Windows Embedded

The death of Microsoft's free consumer home power-monitoring service, Hohm, mostly resulted from its organization under the Windows Embedded Business segment, according to one of the developers on the project.

Microsoft blogger M.J. Miller explained today in a blog that Microsoft decided to end its Hohm online power-savings software utility because "it didn't fit into the Windows Embedded business model." Miller claims to have worked on the Hohm project from its early starting days.

Microsoft announced last Thursday that it plans to end the Hohm service on May 31, 2012. That announcement pointed to "slow overall market adoption of the service" as one reason for its discontinuation. Microsoft also indicated that it plans to focus on more capable products in a still evolving market.

Miller said in his blog post that the Hohm project first started at Microsoft in November of 2007. It was later moved over to the Windows Embedded Business side of the company. It lasted nine months there before being killed.

"How we ended up in WEB is another, longer, probably more twisted story, but that's where we ended, and that's why the product is being shut down next year," Miller wrote. "We certainly didn't call it quits because Google shut down PowerMeter. Believe it or not that was simply a coincidence."

Google also announced the ending of its PowerMeter effort just a few days before Microsoft called it quits on Hohm. Google cited disappointment that the PowerMeter service had not "scaled as quickly as we would like," and indicated that it will end the service on Sept. 16, 2011.

The service discontinuations by Microsoft and Google come just after the Obama administration announced stepped up efforts to support "smart grid" technologies, including an effort to help consumers save energy through the use of "enhanced information." For instance, the government has fostered a Grid 21 private sector initiative to "help consumers get better access to their own energy usage information so that they can take advantage of new tools and services to manage their energy use and save on their utility bills," according to a White House press release (PDF).

Microsoft's hardware partner on Hohm was Newfoundland, Canada-based Blue Line Innovations Inc., a maker of energy-monitoring hardware. Blue Line had also partnered with Google on its PowerMeter software. The Blue Line devices worked with both power-monitoring software products to automatically collect and track power usage statistics, instead of having to manually enter data. (Microsoft's Hohm requires users to manually enter data about their home appliances to generate power-saving suggestions.)

Blue Line recently announced (PDF) an as-yet-unspecified software partner to replace the phased-out Microsoft and Google solutions. The new partner will be disclosed "at the end of the month."

Automatic tracking with Hohm was also possible for consumers who used the services of certain participating utility companies. Miller discounted the idea that Hohm had been discontinued because utility companies are now producing their own smart meters.

Hohm worked by providing a score from 0 to 100 to estimate a home's energy efficiency. Its calculations were based on analytics solutions licensed from the Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley Labs.